Debbie…
New York City:
May 8th, 2012
How did I get to the street?
I wanted to learn about God, and I wanted to learn
what it is to be a servant. I wanted to get closer to people on the street,
to help, to understand, to learn, and to see what it means to love your neighbor …
What did the Hebrew prophet mean, what did Jesus mean,
when they said if you really want to move closer to the heart of life,
to the heart of God, get closer to the poor?
~ Rev. Debbie Little
I first met Debbie Little on September 12th 2001 in Starbucks in Cambridge, just over the river from Boston.
Elisha, Debbie’s administrator, and I had spent most of the previous day trying to reach her on his cell phone, as she had been due to attend a meeting only a block away from the World Trade Centre and we didn’t know where she was when the planes hit. I had arrived in Boston only three days earlier to do a placement with Debbie as part of my training for ministry at Ridley Hall and hadn’t been expecting to find myself in the middle of such a disaster.
The meeting in Starbucks was short.
Debbie was trying to come to terms with what had happened the previous day and we were all wondering where it was going to end. Despite all that was going on I knew exactly what I was looking for out of that meeting, and my antennae was up.
Five years previously I had worked for another Christian project in Cardiff, which had been controlling and dysfunctional. I had been left with suspicion of charismatic leaders which has served me well ever since but which, at the time had left me bewildered about what real ministry looked like.
I have only ever met two people who can discern what’s required in ten minutes, get straight to its heart, and then let it go again. The first person I ever saw do that was Rowan Williams and the other is Debbie Little.
In her writing about Common Cathedral I had come back to one phrase.
” we want people to come, to be celebrated wholeheartedly, and to go whenever they wish”.
I was very grateful to have felt that too, at the end of our meeting. To feel as if I had been heard ‘into speech’ and then gently released. It answered my questions and enabled me to embrace a ministry which continues to feed and inspire all those who cross its path.
Debbie’s great gift and the gift of Ecclesia is just such incredible openness to the needs and experiences of others and a commitment to discern what is really needed. The alternative is always that we impose what we need and call it love. For a long time I had a postcard on my desk in my study which said simply “doing good is a hustle too”. Another Ecclesia phrase. She has taught me a great deal about managing our own ‘need to be needed’, about mutuality, and about self-care.
As a parish priest I have continued to learn the hard way that people have their own often hard-won autonomy and that most of our task is to get out of God’s way. I have never grown in an atmosphere of feeling controlled by another person or by the agenda of an organisation. I don’t believe anyone does. It’s a hard culture to cultivate in ourselves and in our church communities but it’s important to try if we are even remotely serious about healing and change.
The ministry which Debbie started is now 129 ministries right across the United States, and Common Cathedral in Boston is going strong. There is a culture of openness and a willingness to fail which I noticed again on Saturday, joining others for a study day in Hartford. I believe this culture was inculcated by Debbie herself and it is going on beyond her. She, in any case, has let go of the need to keep hold of the strings. I would not have expected anything less from her.
When I moved into the vicarage in January 2007, Debbie was my very first visitor and I learned that she is a good person to have around when you have just moved house! She sat quietly while I opened the box of presents which I had brought from Lancashire, offering encouragement as I made my way down the pile of memories. She didn’t interfere, just kept me company.
I value that very much.
